The Ancient Egyptian army had various weapons! Here's the lowdown...

The weapons used by the armies of ancient Egyptians could vary widely from period to period. During the predynastic period of Egypt, the military used simple bows, arrows, throw sticks, slings, daggers, clubs, and maces. The Old Kingdom saw the advent of spears. The Middle Kingdom saw quivers and battle axes used for the first time, as well as arrowheads, mace heads, and spear heads now being made from metal (previously from stone). It also saw the retirement of maces as common weapons of war. The Second Intermediary Period and the New Kingdom saw a larger influx of new weapons than in the periods before, with the advent of composite bows, khopeshs, and swords, and the retirement of the battle axe. Various sections of the army had different weapons. The charioteers used the bow and arrow, as well as the spear. The weapons of the infantry varies throughout Egypt's history, with spears, battle axes, daggers, clubs, maces, throw sticks, khopeshs, and swords all being used at one time. Once the chariots fired a rain of arrows and seriously wound the enemy, the infantry would rush in and massacre their opponents.

The new Bronze Age (which started around 2000 BC) and the Iron Age (started around 1000 BC) brought a wave of change to Egypt. The new metals was mostly used by the military, since it was much too expensive for the common people, who still had tools from stone during the Bronze Age, and tools from bronze during the Iron Age. Bronze equipment (especially arrowheads) were probably often imported during the Middle Kingdom, not being produced in Egypt until the 18th Dynasty. The reason for this is that there are no tin mines in Egypt (bronze is a alloy of copper and tin), meaning all tin was imported, probably from the Middle East. The Egyptians probably worked out how to cast bronze by themselves, unlike with iron. Iron mines are also not found in Egypt. The art of forging iron was imported from Eastern Europe, and the iron itself was imported from the Middle East.

Regardless of how weapons were made, all weapons were made and stored at royal arsenals, much like today. One arsenal during the New Kingdom was at Memphis, its name being Khepesh. Some of the people who worked at Khepesh were buried at Saqqara. Some of their titles include:

Head of chariot makers. Chief of the workshop of the Lord of the Two Lands. Chief of the workshop in the arsenal. Chief of the manufacturers of the arsenal. One arsenal employee buried at Saqqara was a man named Ipuya. He title was extremely flashy:Chief of the workshop and head of the goldsmiths of the Lord of the Two Lands. A big job, to oversee all those weapons.

Once Egypt would march off to war, weapons would be distributed to each soldier. This was sometimes done through a big ceremony. One of the esteemed guests would be the pharaoh him/herself. During one such ceremony, Ramesses III gave a speech from a balcony. He was a inspiring and nationalistic dude, based on his words: Wake your arms, draw your weapons in order to destroy the rebelling lands who do not know Egypt, the strength of Amen my father.

Big army, bigger ego.

Now let's take a closer look at each kind of weapon...

Throw Stick

Throw sticks, also known as boomerangs, had a limited use in the ancient Egyptian military. It was first developed as a weapon during the predynastic period of Egypt. They quickly found one big flaw in it; it's not very efficient. The few reasons that the throw stick was automatically thrown into the trash and abandoned as a weapon of war was because the ancient Egyptians believed the throw sticks had a holy effect. Plus, the throw stick was a very cheap secondary weapon for the infantry, and its subsequent loss was of little importance. Not to mention that the throw stick was also used through much of Egypt's dynastic history for fowl hunting in the marshes in the Delta region. As a result, the throw stick was used by skilled infantry all the way to the end of the New Kingdom, when it was finally abandoned. One way we know about all this is due to the decorated throw sticks from the tomb of the boy king Tutankhamen. King Tut loved hunting ducks and was buried with both returning and non-returning boomerangs. Do note that the boomerangs used by the ancient Egyptians in warfare were NOT returning boomerangs. These types were used for leisure and sport. The type of boomerang/throw stick used during warfare and (usually duck) hunting was the non-returning boomerang (also called the hunting boomerang).

Club

Clubs came into being before the predynastic period, which was a rather peaceful time for ancient Egypt (on comparison, war was almost a constant feature in predynastic Mesopotamia). Clubs were originally made from thick tree branches. Wood is both strong and shock-absorbing, necessary factors for many weapons, including clubs. But the fact that wood is usually quite light was quite bad for any club. You see, the main use of the club was to crack your enemy's skull. The heavier the club was, the better the job would be done. The Egyptians tried making the farther end of the club wider, in order to give it added weight and strength. But this had only limited success. The ancient Egyptians soon gave up using the club and embraced an new impact weapon: the mace.

Mace

Maces rolled around for the first time in Egypt during the predynastic period. A mace is basically a wooden handle with a hard and heavy object fastened to the farther end of it. The hard and heavy object wad originally stone. Stone, however, breaks rather easily and comes in various shapes, thus making attachment to the handle problematic. The advent of copper solved these problems, but added some new ones. Copper was originally very expensive, likely because it was so hard to extract the metal. And once you got it, casting it wasn't easy either. But the Egyptians wanted a stronger mace head, despite the costs. The new cooper mace heads were usually made in a cone shape. The handle now would gradually get thinner as it got nearer to the head, a technique designed to keep the mace head from falling off.

The mace did not require much agility to use. What it did require was a lot of strength. As a result, the mace began to symbolize, and still does, the power of the ruler, governing body or state (a famous depiction of this is the Narmer Palette, in which Narmer wields a mace). The khopesh would have a similar meaning later in Egyptian history. Rulers in ancient Egypt were often described at conquering lands with a mace (though there is debate whether they actually did so). The Stela of Amadeh records about Amenhotep II:

His Majesty returned in joy of heart to his father Amen; his hand had struck down seven chiefs with his mace himself, which were in the territory of Takhsi.

An relief in Karnak tells a similar thing about Seti I:

Your mace is over the head of every foreign land and their great ones fall victim to your sword.

Maces were standard in the armies of ancient Egypt and Canaan (unlike in Mesopotamia, where body armor prevented the mace from having a prominent place in the military). Therefore, the style of the mace never really changed. However, the Egyptians changed the head shape twice. The first was a disk-like shape (designed to have a stronger impact the the cone shape and for cutting wounds onto the enemy), which was developed during the Naqada I period (3850-3650 BC) of the predynastic period of Egypt. The second was a pear shape (known as a "piriform"), whcih was developed during the Naqada II period (3600-3250 BC) of the predynastic period. This shape proved to be the better of the two, and was used extensively during the Naqada III period (3250-3100 BC) of the predynastic period. Other shapes did emerge but the disk and pear shapes remained standard mace head shapes. But by the Middle Kingdom, as new armor techniques came to be (namely, stronger shields), the Egyptian infantry abandoned using the mace as a weapon of war, embracing instead the battle axe. The mace didn't appear again until the Middle Ages in the form of the "Morning Star", but that happened in Europe, not in Egypt.

Bows, Arrows, and Quivers

The bow and arrow have been one of ancient Egypt's most important weapons, used from predynastic times till the end of the pharaohs, as well as during the Roman, Christian and Islamic history of the nation. Bows were first made in predynastic times by connecting two antelope horns to each side of a piece of wood; this kind of bow is called a "horn bow" (no need to guess why). These types of bows usually had two bumps on them; this is called a double curvature. By the Old Kingdom, however, ancient Egyptians began to shift to single-arched bows, also called simple bows or self bows. The body was a wooden rod, which got thinner on the ends; the length was about one to two meters. The longer bows were strengthened by wrapping the rod with string. The cords were either tendons or were made from plant fibers. Simple bows were easier to make than the old horn bows and were more stable (due to their size), but were harder to pull (again, due to their size). The old horn bows were usually smaller and thus easier to pull back. Due to the double curvature, the old horn bows had a greater draw-length than the simple bows, which is an important part of any bow. The simple bow became an important part of the armies of the Old and Middle Kingdoms. But when the Hyksos took over Egypt around 1670 BC, they brought a new type of bow that took Egypt by storm.

This new type of bow was the composite bow (which was technically a recurve bow). It would soon replace the single bow as the main weapon of the charioteers. You see, in order for a bow to have as much range as possible, it needs to be as small and as light as possible. In order to fire an arrow, you need to pull the cord back as far as possible; the maximum length should be the length of the archer's arm. On the simple bow, it is impossible to pull the cord that far because the tension to the rod would break the wood. There are two ways to fix this. One way is to make the bowbigger. The downside of this is that larger bows are harder to use, particularly if you're on horseback or in a chariot. The other way is to place some kind of elastic material at the belly of the bow (the center bit of the rod). Something that would withstand the tension of the pulling. Something like antelope horn. Yes, the composite bow added antelope horn to the belly of the bow to help make it stronger and more elastic. To make the bow even stronger, tendons, which withstand tension much better than wood, are glued on the back of the bow using animal glue (also called hide glue, it's a special glue made by boiling fish gall bladders until they turn into a gelatin-like consistency. Naturally the resulting mixture stank). The tendons came from from the legs and back of deer and most domestic hoofed animals, except the ox. Once you glued the wood, horn and tendons into position, birch bark was then glued all over the body to keep it safe. You then had to wait several months before the glue fully dried and you could use the bow!

Composite bows, however, weren't perfect. They needed more care than simple bows, were much harder to make, had a gluing time of several months, and cost more money as well. And while it took a week to make the body of a composite bow (and months more for it to dry), the body of a simple bow could be made in a day. Since glue was also used for simple bows, you needed to dry it as well, but it only took about a week. It didn't help that composite bows were usually imported from the Middle East, as with all "new" weapons (swords, etc.). Humidity and water had a bad effect on the animal glue, forcing archers to cover the bows when not in use. Composite bows also needed to be unstrung when not in use. And stringing the cord back into position was no easy task, usually requiring two people to do it (simple bows also were unstrung when not in use, but it was far easier to restring than the composite bow). To top it all off, for a normal archer, the composite bow gave no more firing power than a simple bow; it's just a lot more expensive and complicated (if you were a charioteer and horse-rider, however, the composite bow would give you more firing power than the simple bow). As a result, the simple bow never fully disappeared from ancient Egypt. Normal archers (the best reportedly were from Nubia) still used the simple bow during the time of the New Kingdom. Tuthmosis III and his son Amenhotep II were rather fond of the simple bow, which took years of practice and a lot of strength and agility to learn to use properly. Hieroglyphics on the Stela of Amenhotep II tell us of this:Amenhotep II ... drew three hundred of the bows hardest to bend in order to examine the workmanship, to distinguish between a worker who doesn't know his profession and the expert. Amenhotep then went on to chose the perfect bow from the three hundred. It was to be a special bow, one that reportedly only he could draw properly. ... he came to the northern shooting range and found they had prepared for him four targets made of Asiatic copper thick as a man's palm. Twenty cubits divided between the poles. When His Majesty appeared in his Chariot like Montu with all his power, he reached for his bow and grabbed four arrows with one hand. He speeded his chariot shooting at the targets, like Montu the god. His arrow penetrated the target, cleaving it. He drew his bow again at the second target. None had ever hit a target like this, none had ever heard that a man shot an arrow a target made of copper and that it should cleave the target and fall to the ground, none but the king, strong and powerful, as Amen made him a conqueror. The more powerful but more expensive composite bow was reserved for the charioteers, who needed them to make the first charge of the battle and quickly penetrate the enemy's shield and scale armor.

Accessories for archers were rarely seen in the ancient Egyptian army. The main accessory was the quiver, which was made from strong, durable materials, like certain types of fabric. It was sometimes decorated in a tapestry-like fashion. Quivers first came into use during the Middle Kingdom.

Some archers would wear protection from the bow-string. They would wear cloth over the arm which with they pulled back the bow-string. The also sometimes wore protectors over their thumbs. The protectors were made from a hard material, such as stone.

Arrows, on the other hand, were made from reeds, with three feathers attached to the back. The arrowhead was originally made of flint or hardwood. During the predynastic period, this were changed to obsidian, which can be sharpened far more than any stone or metal can be (obsidian was also used for ritual circumcisions in ancient Egypt). Obsidian was imported from the eastern Mediterranean area or from the southern Red Sea area. Bronze arrowheads came to be used instead during the 2nd millennium BC. The Egyptians finally changed to iron arrowheads around 1000 BC. Arrowheads were usually sharp and made for piercing. But one type of arrowhead (used during the predynastic period) had a wide blade instead of a sharp point at the end of the arrowhead. This type, which was only used during the predynastic period, was designed to give deep cuts to the victim. Archaeologists have even found arrowheads that are blunt! This type of arrowhead was probably used to hunt small game.

Spear

The spear, a rather cheap weapon, was originally used for hunting big game, such as lions, hippopotamuses, or buffaloes. It was used in the armies of the Old and Middle Kingdoms in the form of a javelin, or a throwing spear. Its main function was for throwing or thrusting, its length aiding soldiers to avoid getting too close to the enemy. However, it was replaced during the New Kingdom by the bow and arrow as the main weapon used for penetrating armor. Although the spear had more potentialpower (which came from its greater weight) than the bow and arrow, it was also larger and more clumsy. Plus, often the only armor soldiers had was a shield, making a large penetration weapon unnecessary. Plus, the arrows could be mass-produced quicker than the spear.

Although spears disappeared from the Egyptian infantry during the New Kingdom (unlike in ancient Greece, where the spear would become a staple for the infantry), they found a new home among the weapons of the charioteers. Charioteers would use their spears once they'd run out of arrows. The spear was also useful for impaling retreating enemies (one fresco portrays Ramesses III stabbing captured Libyans with a spear). The spears didn't change for this new job; they retained their size, which was about the height of a man, and their javelin-likeness (for comparison, ancient Greek spears could be three or four times taller than the average man!).

By the time of the Late Period and the Persian invasions, the ancient Egyptians were busy adopting new weapons and military tactics from other nations. Spears were once again incorporated into the infantry. The infantry would fight in squares that were one hundred men long and one hundred men wide. Xenophon, the famous Greek historian, wrote about the Egyptian spear-men who worked as mercenaries for Croesus, the king of Lydia:

... a body of Egyptians were coming by sea, amounting--so said the Indians--to 120,000 men, armed with long shields reaching to their feet, huge spears (such as they carry to this day), and sabres.

He continues by saying:

Their spears were immensely stout and long, such as they carry to this day, and the huge shield not only gave more protection than corslet and buckler, but aided the thrust of the fighter, slung as it was from the shoulder. Shield locked into shield, they thrust their way forward; and the Persians could not drive them back, with their light bucklers borne on the forearm only.

Spears were not made especially fancy. The pointed spearhead was originally made from either flint. This was attached to a long wooden pole by a tang (a projecting tip in the back of a object that, in weaponry, serves to connect the handle to the blade/head in swords, spears, arrows, etc. See image (right) for reference). When the Bronze Age began in Egypt around 2000 BC, spearheads began to be made out of copper. The Egyptians began making spearheads out of iron around 1000 BC.

Daggers

Khopesh

The khopesh, also called the khepesh or sickle-sword, is probably the most famous weapon from ancient Egypt. The army Ramesses the Great famously used it at the Battle of Karnak. But the khopesh isn't an Egyptian weapon. The Egyptians copied it from the Canaanites in the Levant region to the north, who probably copied it from the sickle or the battle axe. Thutmose III was the first pharoah to use it in his infantry.cThe khopesh consists of a thick bladed weapon that is crescent-shaped, its length being about two feet. It was made mostly for slashing, and was only really sharpened on the outer edge of the crescent. Khopeshs are really scary weapons; they could leave nasty wounds if in the right (or wrong) hands. The khopesh was often depicted as a "weapon of victory", including being called such on the Rosseta Stone.

There were three types of khopeshs. The first type had a hook on the end of the blade; this was useful for grabbing shields, clothing, and even human limbs! The second type had a spike on the end, useful for stabbing your enemies in the face or elsewhere. The third type (pictured right) was a cross between the other two; there was a hook for grabbing, and a spike for stabbing.

Khopeshs are newer weapons than spears or bows. Khopeshs (and other types of swords) couldn't be made until the Bronze Age (which started around 2000 BC), because normal copper is just too soft. Bronze is much harder than copper and easier to cast. Once it's hardened with tin, then you can start making swords. If you repeatedly heat and cool the metal, a very strong weapon will turn out. Sword handles were made from wood or ivory. But around the time of the 19th dynasty (which ruled from 1292 to 1189 BC), the khopesh went out of style, though it was still occasionally used in by the military. It was replaced by a new bladed weapon: the sword.

Swords

Real swords, which were basically long version of the knife, were brought to Egypt in the 13 century BC by the Sea People, who probably got it from Eastern Europe. This new type of sword was straight, had a double-edged blade and a sharp point at the end. The length was usually about 75 centimeters. However, the new swords meant the Egyptian fighting techniques would have to be changed. Khopeshs use made for slicing; normal swords are used more for stabbing. But instead of completely going over to the sword, the Egyptians of the New Kingdom integrated swords and khopeshs into their armies (at least that's what hieroglyphics appear to show us). One example of this happened during Ramesses III's campaign in Libya. Mercenaries from Sherden and Philistine marched ahead of Egyptian soldiers. The foreign mercenaries had normal swords designed for stabbing; the Egyptians still had the old khopeshs, which were designed for slashing. The mercenaries first breached the lines of Libyans with the piercing swords. Before the Libyans had a chance to recover, the Egyptians, chopping the enemy to pieces using their khopeshs (but remember, there's a good chance that khopeshs were not even used at the time. Many of the depictions of khopeshs and maces in hieroglyphics may actually be triumphal rather than related to combat). Ancient Egyptian swords were originally made from bronze. During the Late Period, Egyptian swords began to be made from iron, which was the standard material for swords all over the Mediterranean at the time (do note, however, that the ancient Egyptian associated iron with Set, the evil god of deserts, storms, and foreigners). Iron was stronger than bronze, and iron swords could be forged far thinner, and thus lighter, than bronze swords. Swords originally would gradually get thinner from the handle, ending with a sharp point. They were very light and probably used mainly for stabbing. The swords of the Sea People, however, were larger, and and some people think they were made for cutting rather than for stabbing. By the Late Period, swords were the same width all the way from the hallway, ending suddenly in a sharp tip. These types of swords, which by this time were made exclusively from iron, were mostly definitely used for chopping. Properly-made swords had a much better technique than maces or axes did. If you used a mace or an axe, the larger you were, the better advantage you would have over your opponents. Swords could be used by anyone of any size and still give the same amount of advantage.

Scabbards were rarely used by the Egyptians. Khopeshs were just tucked into the belt. Scabbards were only used for normal swords. Existing scabbards were edged with metal and covered with leather or some other degradable material. The metal edges were to prevent the sword from cutting through the scabbard. Some scabbards had little metal eyes, by which the scabbard was attached to a belt. Such scabbard were found in the tomb of Tutankhamen.

Battle Axes

The ancient Egyptian battle axe was first developed around 2000 BC during the Old Kingdom. There were two types of axes. The first type was the cutting axe. This type of axe was developed around 2000 BC during the Old Kingdom. It consisted of two parts. The axe heads were crescent-shaped and originally made from flint. They eventually began to be made from bronze (thanks to the all-new Bronze Age). The axe heads were fixed into holes or grooves in long wooden handles, which were meant to be as long as needed to avoid cutting yourself. Relatively little energy was exerted when using the cutting axe. And it was great for throwing or for slashing or hacking through unarmed troops and their pathetic shields (back then, Egyptian shields were framed with wood and then covered in animals hides). Cutting axes, however, were better at chopping through wounded or fleeing enemies than actually breaking through a line of soldiers. The enemy usually was first weakened by archers; soldiers with battle axes would then rush in to wreck carnage on the unarmed opponents. But once the Hyskos arrived with armor in the 2nd millennium BC, the Egyptians abandoned the cutting axe in favor of something a little more... penetrating.

Luckily the Hyskos had a alternative type of axe. The piercing axe came to be when cultures in the Middle East changed the way that they attached the axe head to the handle. Instead of attaching the axe head to grooves in the handle, there would be a hole in the handle, through which the handle to be fitted. The Hyskos brought this new type of axe to Egypt when they conquered it. But even with this new innovations to the battle axe, the Egyptians stopped using it. When the New Kingdom rolled around, the military replaced the battle axe with the khopesh.

Another type of ancient Egyptian axe is the so-called fan axe (pictured left). This type of axe appears on ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, though archaeologists have never actually found one. The axe, which was probably used for slashing, consisted of a fan-shaped head mounted on a long pole. However, there is a good chance that the axe never existed. And if it did exist, it probably wasn't a weapon of war; its use was likely chiefly ceremonial. This isn't a true axe; it resembles more the halberd.

Sling

Slings are simple weapons that don't require much expertise to use. The main danger from the sling was the impact of the "bullet" once it hit someone, and the fact that, if in the hands of skilled users, the sling was more accurate than the bow and arrow. Lightly armed soldiers would rain down stones on armies, who often wouldn't see the rocks until it was too late. Despite this, the sling never had a prominent role in the ancient Egyptian army, likely because it was a impact weapon. It was forced to play second fiddle to the bow and arrow, often being used just to gain the attention of theenemy. One advantage the the sling had over the bow was that it was much easier to learn how to properly fire the sling than the bow. Another advantage that the sling had over the bow was that ammo for the sling was very easy to get. The ammunition for the sling was usually just pebbles or small rocks (of course, if there were any enemy slingers, you would be effectively throwing free ammo to them!). One slight disadvantage of using rocks as ammunition for slings was the varying shape and weight. Heavier rocks were more effective that light ones, but it was often hard to quickly find heavy rocks; and the best rock shape for slingers was a almond-like shape. By the Late Period, however, a new substance for making ammo came around: lead. Sling ammo would now be cast and have one consistent size (almond-sized) and weight. You could find two types of ammo: light ammo (weighs 40 grams, and can be thrown 150 meters. Normal rocks could only be thrown half as far) and heavy ammo (100 grams and could be thrown farther than 100 meters). The ammo often had the mark of the creator imprinted on it.

Slings were often used in ancient Egyptian and Nubian siege warfare in place of catapults. The huge rocks thrown by some slinger can have devastating effects on walls, roofs, and unfortunate victims. The Piankhi stela records one time that this happened. The setting is the Siege of Khumun (Khumun was the Egyptian name of the city. The Greek name, which is used in the text below, was Hermopolis) , which was carried our by the Nubian conqueror of Egypt and founder of the 21st Dynasty, King Piye (also called Piankhi, hence the stela's name):

He (King Piye) set up for himself the camp on the southwest of Hermopolis, and besieged it daily. An embankment was made, to inclose the wall; a tower was raised to elevate the archers while shooting, and the slingers while slinging stones, and slaying people among them daily. The sling itself was rarely showed in hieroglyphics; the first ever depiction was created in the 20th century BC. Few ancient sling have survived the ages, possibly because they were made from perishable materials. Archaeologists have found Egyptian slings that date to around 1300 BC in perfect condition in Tutankhamen's tomb. Broken slings that date from 800 BC have also been excavated from El-Lahun at Faiyum, Egypt.